Holding onto your friendships after graduation is one of the biggest worries for all final year students. Here are the best tips for ensuring you keep your friends once you have graduated!
Long gone are the days where you had to text all your friends individually. If you haven’t already, create a group chat with all your uni friends and drop messages frequently. The best part about this is that it feels like everyone is still together, even if you are miles apart in reality. You can still share all your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with them. Group chats usually have a video chat function too, so try to pencil that into your schedule when everyone is free. You will feel as though you never left.
Sometimes group chats can become hard to follow when you have been busy for a few days and come back to over 100 new messages. If that happens, you could create a private Facebook group where you can all share pictures and statuses updating everyone about what is going on in your life – all the while keeping it away from the prying eyes of the nosey aunt who stalks your public feed.
This can be difficult if everyone is living in different places, but the chances are at least a few of you are near enough a particular city that you can plan a night out every now and then. If you are too spread out for this, you could make it a monthly thing where you alternate travelling to each person’s local city. Hopefully they have a sofa you can crash on too. The best part is that you will appreciate these nights way more than you did at university. Plus you don’t have to worry about skipping studying to go out.
If you do live too far apart for group nights out, this is the perfect solution. Plan a time when everyone can get annual leave from work and book a short break away somewhere. This will give you a good few days to reconnect and catch up – and chances are you will have a lot of gossip to discuss if you haven’t seen each other in months!
Christmas is probably the one time of year that you will all have free time – unless you work in a sector which does not grant leave at that time of year. Once you have finished celebrating Christmas with your family, you can use the rest of the festive break to catch up with your friends. Host an annual New Year party so everyone can come together and welcome the next year as a group.
If you really do not have time to get together as a group at any time of the year, this can be a good way to stay connected even when you are far apart. Find something you all bond over and use it to create a chain post system. It could be a book club where you choose one book and each person in the group reads it and then mails it to the next person, or you could go down the classic route and use a pair of jeans. Whatever you choose, it will allow you to maintain your friendships no matter where you are.
All of these tips will help you hold onto your friendships, but none of them will work unless you give it all of your efforts. Once you have a career and a family, you will have far less time to spend with your friends – but you have to find that time somewhere in your schedule. Even if you haven’t spoken to a friend in months, don’t simply assume they have forgotten about you. Reach out and send them a message. Chances are they have just been really busy and would love to talk to you again.
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